Disclaimer: "Detective Conan" belongs to Gosho Aoyama, and "Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon" belongs to Naoko Takeuchi.
This is an alternative story to my other fanfic "Encounter in Venice" and one of the possibilities of what could have happened if Ai had taken the antidote before Shinichi brought down the Organization.
Thanks a lot to my friends and betas Rae (Astarael00) and SN1987a and the Aicoholics on LiveJournal, without whom I would never have started this fic.
FS
g.
Ghost at Twilight
(edited version)
g.
After accepting…
After accepting Tenoh-san's invitation to lunch with her in Tsukino-san's café on Sunday, I settle on a bar stool to stare at my lavender rose with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the knowledge that Tenoh-san is probably the only person who could leak my secret to Seiya has given me a glimmer of hope. On the other hand, I know from past experiences that Tenoh-san's obstinacy is an impregnable fortress in every sense of the word. For better or worse, Tenoh Haruka always keeps her promises and carries out her threats. And I don't doubt for a moment that she would selflessly incriminate herself to separate Seiya and me for good if she deems it necessary.
If I were the devil-may-care type, I would simply elope with my "stranger at twilight" in the hope that Tenoh-san values our tentative on-again, off-again friendship so much that she will cast her moral objections to the wind and keep her mouth shut. However, I know very well that there is no place where I could hide him from her if she wanted to find us. False hope, unleashed by Tenoh-san's call, only prolongs the torture by making the situation bearable enough for me not to give up. And if I'm honest to myself, I know Tenoh-san was right when she told me that I can't ever have a future with Seiya with or without her approval.
Even if Tenoh-san didn't disclose my—and her—secret to him, I would never manage to forget. After a few years, the mounting pressure would become so enormous that it would ultimately ruin everything we have built up together until then. I would either distance myself from him or confess... Or I could step back now and let go in the hope that this, too, will pass...
Peeking through the balcony door into the garden in search of Kudo, I discover that he has miraculously disappeared. After giving up attracting my attention with his pebbles, he must have embarked on a Juuban exploration all by himself or been abducted by my infatuated landlady.
Contrary to my expectations, neither Kudo nor my landlady are on the stairs or at the main entrance when I leave my apartment. Further inspection also shows that Kudo is nowhere to be found, neither in front of Furuhata's bar nor on the side streets in the vicinity. Unable to wait for me for a few minutes despite letting me wait for hours, he must have run off to solve a new case or (and this is a horror scenario I don't even want to think of!) to interrogate Seiya...
On the way back home I'm struck by the startlingly brilliant sunlight. The midday sun is blazing down and the air is fresh and damp after the torrential rain. Cherry blossoms, azaleas, and spring roses of various colours are all blooming, as spring has come earlier than expected. In view of the splendour around me, the realization hits me that it is most comforting to see how the outside world keeps moving no matter what happens to myself. In a way, it's liberating to know that I'm not really needed and that no one depends on me so much that my absence would make a damaging impact on their life. Well, no one but my unfortunate "guinea pig" Kudo.
Just when I decide to go home and wait for Kudo in my apartment, I spot him at the gate to the garden. Apparently, he has really been abducted by my landlady, as he is now coming towards me with a gloomy expression on his face and his new admirer in tow. Beaming with pleasure like the sun through the white clouds, she is obviously so taken with him that I'm positive I can kiss my peace goodbye for now. Back then when Kaito visited me every night in succession for two weeks, he had to use disguises and enter my apartment through the balcony because the busybody had been watching the entrance to the house like a hawk.
"Your detective has just solved a case for me," she announces. She had been "terribly distraught" because she had the feeling someone had entered her apartment last night, a suspicion her husband brushed off as baseless paranoia. It has turned out that the mysterious visitor was her daughter Reika, who had suddenly returned from Egypt without writing her parents in advance (and who had to ransack her parents' first aid kit in the middle of the night because she had hurt her foot and needed a plaster). The young archaeologist had been sleeping in her apartment on the third floor when Kudo and her parents rang her out of bed and is now taking a shower to freshen up after ten hours of flying.
"She only came back to see her beloved Motoki and will only stay for a few days," my landlady sighs. The girl is so restless it's impossible to keep her in the same city for longer than a month if there is no dig or important archaeological finds for her to study! But she can't stay away from Tokyo for long either since she would miss her long-distance boyfriend. The two of them have been dating for almost ten years in this haphazard fashion.
A serious relationship between two people who are essentially opposites and therefore incompatible is the perfect recipe for an unhappy life, my landlady claims. Emotionally unstable women like Reika sell themselves short in impossible romantic relationships with men they find attractive while smart women choose a partner who is more suitable for them...
"You said you were starving. Let's go out for lunch!" I impatiently cut her off by dragging Kudo by his arm with me. Wishing my landlady a nice day with her husband and daughter, I flee with Kudo in the direction of Furuhata's bar and only let go of him when we're standing in front of the Crown, the game centre on the first floor of the large house where Furuhata's bar and his sister's coffee shop are located.
"Great, we've shaken her off," I observe in satisfaction.
"We have." He throws me a disapproving look. "But she only tried to be nice. What's wrong with you?"
Everything is wrong with me today! What's wrong with you, I'd have liked to retort. But since it's useless to argue with him, I decide to ignore his question and wordlessly open the door to the game centre.
g.
Furuhata's bar is already full when we arrive although we manage to get a table for two near the window in the left corner of the room—the only table which hasn't been reserved in advance. No sooner did Furuhata Motoki-san see us than he rushes to my side with the menus, replaces the single pink rose on our table with a red one, and lights us a scented candle.
Where have you been? Why did it take you so long to return? It's good to see you again! You've become even more beautiful in the meantime. By the way, I sometimes see you on your way home when I visit an old friend of mine, Chiba Mamoru, a neighbour of yours...
Turning his blonde head towards Kudo, he exclaims, "As I can see, you two are still inseparable! It's good to see you, too!"
"Do we really look that alike?" Kudo asks me after Furuhata has left.
"Except for your hair, you two could be twins or even the same person."
"Did you mistake him for me?" he asks, belligerently.
I look up from the menu to show him a raised eyebrow.
"If that had been the case, I wouldn't have gone out with him."
"I thought so!" He nonchalantly shrugs. "Your taste in men has always been atrocious!"
"That's true since they're all as reckless and as arrogant as you," I quip, and we laugh at each other for the first time since I cried into his shirt.
g.
The food is absolutely delicious, as expected. But despite the excellent weather, comfortable chairs, pleasant surroundings, good company, and the first-rate service from Furuhata-san, it's almost impossible for me to swallow anything. I'm not hungry at all and don't even crave sweets. Since my thoughts are running around in circles (How can I return to Seiya under these circumstances?), I try to distract myself from the constant anxiety by checking messages and mails on my phone.
"Aren't you hungry?" Kudo, who is also only poking his rice and fish with his chopsticks, asks. "Or would you like to order something else?"
"I'm still full from the gyoza," I tell him truthfully and earn a dark look in reply. He hasn't forgiven me for having breakfast without him yet. And I'm growing tired of his sullen mood, as I can't understand either his jealousy or his resentment against Seiya.
Ayumi-chan has sent me a detailed account of their school trip while Tsuburaya-kun has taken a whole photo gallery's worth of shots for me. Childhood crushes can be troublesome when they outlive their estimated longevity by years. And Tsuburaya-kun's love for me, which I once found flattering and adorable, has become another headache-inducing issue.
"Mail from Mitsuhiko?" Kudo asks with a knowing grin. I don't know how he has deduced that again. Perhaps Seiya was right when he claimed that my face is an open book whenever I'm not making an effort to hide my thoughts.
"Yes, photos from their school trip."
"How often does he write to you?"
"A few times a month," I lie. In reality, Tsuburara-kun writes to me almost every day even though I only answer his mails once a week.
"I think you should put a stop to this before he learns about your new boyfriend." Kudo puts his chopsticks aside.
And how, does he suggest, should I do it without hurting the poor boy, I ask him. Knowing the woes of unrequited love and rejection at first hand, it's hard for me to inflict the same pain on another person. It's one thing not to call back the obnoxious men who try to pick me up at the cafeteria of the university. It's another thing not to reply to the mails of a perfectly nice boy who has been nurturing a crush on me for years.
"He is almost fourteen. In one or two years, he won't be a 'poor boy' anymore," Kudo points out. The age gap is only turning smaller in Tsuburaya-kun's perception as he grows up. In fact, in a few years an age gap of ten years won't be an issue anymore.
Naturally, the age gap won't be an issue for me either since Gin was considerably older than me. But the problem with love is that it cannot be forced. While I like the boy and would have thought him to be a great boyfriend for anyone else, the very idea of dating him is for me unimaginable.
"Some unrequited loves can last for life. Thirteen is also a difficult age. If you don't discourage him before he finds out about Seiya, he will think that you've been leading him on."
I can remember Taiki Kou's face when he read the sonnet. The expression of sympathy, guilt, and apprehension on it immediately intrigued me. He must have replied to her letters at first without knowing what he had brought upon himself. Being loved too ardently can be a never-ending curse—especially when one is adored by the wrong type of person.
Love can show its vicious face when it's obsessive and unfulfilled or unrequited. It carelessly wrecks lives and breaks the toughest people more often than it elevates them. Few people manage to step aside gracefully when their feelings are not returned. In the most extreme cases, rejected lovers end up committing suicide or murder.
"Some women can't stay away from their smartphones even when they're on a date," I hear the voice of the tall man at the table on my right saying, whereupon his companion, an attractive lady with long nails, cheekily remarks, "I wouldn't be staring into my phone if I were dating him." And together they launch into a discourse on internet addiction and relationship-wrecking mobile phones, much to Kudo's enjoyment and my exasperation.
"Just my luck!" I remark. "I almost never use my phone and the first time I use it in years, I have to draw the attention of technophobic hypocrites aka Mr and Mrs Know-It-All."
"You usually don't use your phone." Kudo presses his fingertips together and gives me his Sherlock-Holmes gaze. "So why are you so attached to it now? Don't tell me you're messaging or googling him during our lunch!"
No, I glare at him, omitting the fact that I have to fight the urge to google Seiya and save his photos. I've just answered Ayumi-chan's mail ("I miss you all, too"—an uncommonly sentimental message from cynical yours truly, which will seem to her like the end of the world) and am now reading the background story to Shakespeare's Sonnets to extend my literary education.
Why are you so obsessed with the sonnets? Has he been reciting sonnets for you, Kudo sighs in annoyance.
"Just shut up and listen!" I give him a stern gaze.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
"What do these lines mean?" I wonder.
An idealistic depiction of love in its purest sense, Kudo analyzes, his colour deepening with embarrassment. Eternal, boundless, indestructible despite the passing of time and even the betrayal of the unfaithful lover.
"Impressive," he dryly comments. "He dares to woo you with eternal love although you two have known each other for less than a day."
But is the sonnet really a candid and straightforward declaration of everlasting love? Or is it rather a spiteful jibe against a rival whose love can't be called love according to this poem? Is it a reproach addressed to an unfaithful lover or an accusation, a desperate rebellion against all the forces which prevent love from resembling this idealized image? Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets as a sonnet sequence portraying a tumultuous and destructive love triangle, the passionate and persuasive tone of Sonnet 116 turns against itself and refutes its own claim...
While I don't really care about what Shakespeare thought when he wrote the sonnet, I'm curious about what Misa thought when she sent it to Stick, her worshipped and idolized Taiki-sama.
I try to imagine her… A sickly girl, pale and skinny, with large soulful eyes that light up feverishly whenever she talks about Taiki-sama, literature, or music. Sophisticated, smart, hard-working, and stubborn, frequently torn between intense love and consuming hatred—hiding a passionate nature one would never expect after seeing her quiet, unobtrusive demeanour. She only met Taiki Kou once but overcame her supposed terminal illness after he came to her hospital room and sang for her alone (did she know that it was Odango's suggestion?)—a nice gesture, which was also grand because he didn't only sacrifice his precious free time for her but also did it in secret. After that seemingly fateful encounter with her beloved star, she worked hard and (despite her frail health) got an internship in a renowned little private hospital.
The same where Kakyuu was being treated.
She must have been watching them in secret. The three brothers who always came at least once or twice a month to pay a visit to the comatose sister. Some day, while she overheard them talking, she realized that they weren't blood-related and that their feelings weren't exactly the sibling love brothers usually felt for their sisters. She also found out that Yaten Kou and Taiki-sama both loved Kakyuu, who more or less dated all the three brothers (platonically, non-platonically?) while sharing an apartment with Seiya…
An outrageous arrangement, which must have been unacceptable in the eyes of a girl who has dedicated her life to the goal of conquering the one man she adored. Taiki-sama, who visited Kakyuu almost every week to read her poems, seldom replied to Misa's letters and probably didn't even recognize Misa at first when he saw her again. He only remembered who she was after she had told him...
Kakyuu, as I remember her, looked like the ideal princess who, like Kaioh Michiru, seemed to possess everything—health, intelligence, beauty, humour, and grace. In Misa's eyes, Kakyuu must have been the expensive, luxuriously beautiful type of girl that would always take everything she wanted without giving anything in return. And this spoiled woman had been leading Taiki-sama on, breaking his heart by living with his youngest brother, whom he had such a close relationship with, while keeping Taiki-sama at arm's length for intellectual companionship!
But why am I so mistrustful of a girl I've never met? Just because she was obsessively in love didn't mean that she was hateful and violent. Perhaps the truth was completely different, and Misa belonged to the few people who rose above their passions and who would never even think of hurting the object of their affection.
"What are you thinking of?" asks Kudo.
For a moment, I wonder whether I should tell him the truth.
"Your case two years ago, which you didn't finish because he threw you out of his apartment," I tell him bluntly. While I don't want Kudo to reopen the case, I'm eager to find out what really happened.
"So he has told you about it?" Kudo pushes the fish between us away to bend towards me and almost flings the bowl of soup onto the floor in his excitement. "What did he say?"
"Not much! He only said he was once a suspect of yours and asked me if I was afraid of him, which I wasn't."
"The puzzling guy is as secretive as always," Kudo groans. But if I can find out why Seiya didn't confess his guilt, he would be glad if I let him know.
"Maybe he didn't confess because he was innocent," I reflect and immediately regret saying it aloud. Knowing Kudo, he is going to reopen the case now and not rest until he has brought it to a satisfying conclusion.
"I said I didn't have time to solve such an unimportant case but I just realized that I do have a bit of free time today." Kudo swiftly pulls a battered notebook out of his pocket. "Let's solve the case together if you're privy to information I don't have."
I don't know anything I can tell him about, I lie. But I'd like to hear about the particulars of the case if he doesn't mind.
There isn't much to tell, Kudo sighs. Someone disabled the life support system so that Kakyuu died in her sleep. Ishihara Misako, the young intern whose task was watching over Kakyuu, discovered the dead woman in the late afternoon when she checked on her for the last time before leaving the hospital.
On the same day after lunch time, Kaito paid the hospital a visit to inquire about Seiya's whereabouts, as the latter, who is usually punctual, had asked him to meet up with him in the Crown game centre but didn't turn up at all. Kaito visited Kakyuu but only stayed for a few minutes before he left to help Hakuba renovate his new apartment. Kakyuu was still alive after he left, according to Mizuno-san's witness statement. Five minutes after he left, Yaten Kou, who had been chatting with Kaito about Seiya, entered Kakyuu's hospital room and stayed there for half an hour. Afterwards Yaten Kou spent the rest of the afternoon at the hairdresser's and then went home to practice the guitar. Meanwhile, Taiki Kou, who had spent the whole morning at the computer to take care of his and his brothers' finances, visited his sister about half an hour after Yaten Kou left. He, too, stayed for about half an hour, rearranged the flowers in Kakyuu's room, read her poetry in the hope that she could hear him, and left at two p.m. to go to the library and borrow all the available editions of Shakespeare's Sonnets. This was quite normal for him, so Mizuno-san told Kudo. Her daughter Ami, who was a friend of Taiki Kou's, said that the well-read idol liked English and French poetry and had also begun to write sonnets in Italian.
Just when Taiki Kou left, Seiya appeared and visited Kakyuu with a pot of cyclamen. This was unusual, as he never brought her potted flowers. It was also unusual that he stayed for half an hour, then went out just to return again. In fact, he visited her three times in a row and appeared to all the witnesses distracted and mournful.
He also asked Mizuno-san once again whether she was sure that Kakyuu would be severely impaired after waking up. Being a professional who couldn't give the relatives of her patients false hopes, Mizuno-san told him what ten other doctors had already told him before: that once certain organs and all the important parts of the cerebral cortex had been damaged beyond repair, it was almost impossible to regain the functions associated with them…
"Is everything all right with you?" Kudo breaks off his story to study me with concern. "You're very pale."
"I'm all right. Just horrified by the life she would have led if she had survived. So what happened next?"
Seiya left for the third time at four fifteen p.m., half an hour before Misako-san's shift ended. At half past four, when she checked on Kakyuu for the last time, she noticed that the life support system had been unplugged and the alarm system had been tempered with. Kakyuu couldn't be revived despite Mizuno-san's attempts. There were no fingerprints on the equipments at all.
"It could have been any of the three brothers or even Misako-san," I point out. Even though I feel bad for her, she is my number-one suspect after reading her love letter.
"Exactly," Kudo agrees. However, Misako-san didn't have a motive. She had already been caring for Kakyuu for half a year and was looking forward to a permanent, well-paid job, so she was more interested in preserving the hospital's good reputation. She was also a fan of Three Lights and was proud of caring for their foster sister, whom normal fans didn't know about.
Igarashi Shizuka, Three Lights' agent, fought "with the ferocity of a hungry wolverine" (Kudo loves absurd similes) for her protégés. And the case was closed due to the lack of conclusive evidence and the lack of witnesses, who were all fans of Three Lights and wholeheartedly supported euthanasia in secret when it was committed by their gorgeous Seiya-sama. Since it was obvious that Seiya must have been the culprit but the tiny probability that it was Yaten, Taiki, or Misako-san did exist, Kudo decided to pay Seiya a visit.
Seiya was in a singularly dark mood when Kudo arrived. Nevertheless, he confirmed Kudo's theory that Kakyuu was still alive when he visited her. After hearing Kudo's analysis of the case and Kudo's conclusion, however, he only ushered him out of his apartment without a word about the case. Thus Kudo left and planned to return on the next day, after Seiya had slept on it.
"And then you gave up because Mizuno-san withdrew her assistance and you came across more urgent cases... But what was the detail she didn't tell the police but you?" It seems to me that Kudo has (surprisingly!) jumped to conclusions by pronouncing Seiya the culprit while Shortie and Stick could have pulled the plug as well.
"She liked Seiya very much and wanted to check whether he was all right after their talk since he hadn't shown much emotion, which was uncharacteristic of him." Kudo thoughtlessly balances a spoon on the back of his hand for lack of a ball. "When she opened the door, she saw him sitting at the bed with a handkerchief in his hand. At first she thought he had been crying so that she left the room immediately to give him his privacy. But since there were no fingerprints on the life support machine, as she learned afterwards, she naturally inferred that he must have wiped them away."
"You have no evidence that he did it," I insist.
"None at all, which is why I gave up the case," Kudo admits. "One can't solve a case without sufficient evidence. But if you look at the whole picture, he was the most suspicious. His silence was a tacit admission as well. He didn't even try to deny it when I confronted him."
"Perhaps he only tried to protect one of his brothers."
"Very unlikely." Kudo puts the spoon aside and leans back in his chair. "Mizuno-san claimed that she couldn't remember. But I think she would have noticed if Kakyuu-san had been dead when she opened the door to check on Seiya. Even so, I knew that it was a lost case. And since I thought it wasn't necessary to lock him away, I decided not to waste my time with him and work on other cases instead."
As always, it's hard to argue against Kudo's perfectly sound reasoning, and I've already decided to change the topic when he sneakily adds, "Unless you've found out something interesting at his place, I'll stick to my theory that he was guilty."
He is eyeing me with the alertness of an eagle watching its prey before an attack. And it takes me all my self-control to feign boredom.
No, nothing, I assure him. Seiya didn't talk about the case, and I didn't want to remind him of it because he was very attached to Kakyuu.
"Not attached enough to let her live," Kudo coolly concludes. "To be honest, I wouldn't have known how to tell you about the case if he hadn't mentioned it himself."
"But even if he was the culprit, I could understand his reasons perfectly well. You could sympathize with him, too. You said it yourself."
"I can understand his train of thought, which doesn't mean that I can condone what he has done. If you had been in her situation—"
"I would have wanted him to pull the plug for me." I arduously sip at my drink, frowning. "That's not living, Kudo! It's worse than death for most people who aren't geniuses of your caliber."
"I wouldn't have been able to do it," he continues, ignoring my interjection. "I would never have ended your life like that. I would never have given up hope! Instead, I'd have done anything to make your future bearable."
Oddly enough, his self-righteous speech sounds like a love declaration owing to the intensity in his voice and his eyes. And I would have dwelled on the thought for a little longer if his next remark didn't enrage me.
Did you know that he loved her? They weren't blood-related. They had been living with each other although it was hushed up by his agent. He is not someone you can rely on…
"Of course it's your personal decision—but a man who can pull the plug to his girlfriend's life support system can't be trusted!"
"I suppose that men who take back their proposal only minutes after they made it are more trustworthy," I rejoin with irony while he visibly flinches.
That was something totally different—his voice is shaking with suppressed anger. I accepted that it was impossible because you never committed! You never even said yes, if I remember correctly. I never knew what to think about your unexplainable actions, and then you stabbed me in the back the moment I depended on you!
I thought we were partners. I trusted you completely. But you… You've misused my trust and betrayed me!
g.